In small and medium-sized family businesses, nepotism and the tendency to favor members of the owning family for positions of responsibility discourage other employees, with negative consequences on productivity and business stability. This is shown by one of the first surveys ever conducted on this issue signed by Filippo Ferrari, a professor at the Department of Business Sciences at the University of Bologna. The study analyzed the working conditions of more than 800 employees in 186 small and medium-sized Italian family businesses, showing the presence of discriminatory practices and their negative effects on several indicators of corporate well-being related to productivity. "The discriminatory practices we identified are usually unintentional or acted in absolute good faith on the part of the company's top management, but they have significant effects on the sense of belonging, the perceived sense of justice within the organization, and the intention to arrive at resignations by employees who are not part of the family that leads the company," Ferrari explains. The results of this study confirm that family businesses have dysfunctional dynamics in many cases, especially in terms of choosing members of the owning family to hold positions of responsibility regardless of the skills and abilities they possess. Thus, there emerges a strong need to put the issue of inclusion and diversity management on the corporate policy agenda.